Word.ws English Dictionary

the chickens come home to roost

the chickens come home to roost proverb: a person's past wrongdoings will return to negatively affect them.

Proverb

the chickens come home to roost

  1. (idiomatic) A person's past wrongdoings will return to negatively affect them.
    • Never were truer words than the Spanish proverb, ‘All lies, like chickens, come home to roost.’1846, Lydia Maria Child, The Mother's Book, C.S. Francis & Co. (6th ed., 1st ed. from 1844), page 98.
    • Being an old farm boy myself, chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad.1963, Malcolm X, speech, December 1, 1963

Forms of the chickens come home to roost

alternative formcome home to roost
alternative formcurses, like chickens, come home to roost

Origin of the chickens come home to roost

19th century. First attested as lies, like chickens, come home to roost, although the slightly later curses, like chickens, come home to roost was more common. Both are often said to be Spanish or Turkish in origin. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs notes that Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in The Parson's Tale: “And ofte tyme swich cursynge wrongfully retorneth agayn to hym that curseth, as a bryd that retorneth agayn to his owene nest.”

Questions about the chickens come home to roost

What does the chickens come home to roost mean?
The chickens come home to roost means a person's past wrongdoings will return to negatively affect them.
What part of speech is the chickens come home to roost?
The chickens come home to roost is a proverb.

Words near the chickens come home to roost in the dictionary

  1. the cat's pajamies
  2. the cat's pyjamas
  3. the change
  4. The Channon
  5. The Charltons
  6. the chickens come home to roost
  7. the chuff
  8. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  9. the city of a thousand windows
  10. the clock around
  11. the closet is glass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: the chickens come home to roost (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-the chickens come home to roost.ogg.

Cite this entry: “the chickens come home to roost.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/the_chickens_come_home_to_roost. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.